Fabius Bile: Clonelord

by Josh Reynolds

  Fabius frowned. His battleplate’s enhanced sensory apparatus was being tested to its limits trying to define his surroundings. There were no weather patterns, no landmasses or oceans. Just the strange metal sand and the toxic gases, which he suspected were a by-product of the sand. The glimmerings of a theory whispered in his mind, and he altered the parameters of his sensor sweep. A moment later, he gave a bark of laughter.

  ‘Solar radiation,’ he said, looking around. ‘That’s what’s interfering with our sensors.’ He gestured to the sand. ‘This isn’t sand. It is an untold number of nanomachines – minuscule solar cells. The clouds and the wind are some form of by-product of the energy absorption, and so too is the interference, I’d wager.’

  ‘But where is it getting that sort of power? The only source of radiation would be the sun, but–’ Skalagrim began. He stopped. ‘Unless – no.’ He looked down. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘Oh-ho, not impossible. Merely improbable.’ Khorag clapped his hands free of sand. ‘If so, then we are not on the planet’s surface. There is no surface.’

  ‘Not as we’d recognise it, no,’ Fabius said. He laughed. ‘Oh, what a pretty puzzle!’

  ‘What are you laughing about, Manflayer?’ Palos rumbled, as he trudged towards them, followed closely by Savona. Diomat loomed behind them. The ancient Dreadnought said nothing, but the way his claws flexed told Fabius he was growing impatient.

  ‘This place. It is magnificent, is it not?’ Fabius gestured about himself with Torment.

  ‘It is empty,’ Savona spat. ‘Nothing but dust and clouds.’

  ‘Appearances can be deceiving,’ Fabius said. He looked at Palos. ‘Your gunships – do they still possess standard signal jammers?’ The signal jammers were one of the few reliable methods of successful planetary insertion the Traitor Legions possessed. The jammers were able to create a rough ‘window’ through an orbital sensor grid, ­enabling gunships to theoretically avoid automated defence systems and ground-to-air artillery. An early innovation of the Alpha Legion, provided – if somewhat grudgingly – to their fellow traitors in the later stages of the Solar War.

  Palos shrugged. ‘Of course. But we detected no hostile systems during the descent.’

  ‘Because it’s not hostile. It’s passive. And so far in advance of our own that I doubt it would recognise us as a threat, even if it wasn’t.’ Fabius started towards Butcher-Bird. ‘The only way to get past it is to give it a bit of a shock – startle it, and take advantage of its surprise. Pain is the key that opens many doors, as I have often said.’

  ‘Startle what?’ Palos demanded, as he and the others followed.

  ‘This – all of it. This place. It’s not a planet. Not really. It’s more like the hull of a ship. An immense ship.’ He scooped up a handful of sand. ‘We have boarded it. But now, we must make a breach.’

  It didn’t take long to make the preparations. Even in their current state of degradation, there were yet some among the Third who possessed the wit to understand Fabius’ plan, as he explained it. The gunships’ signal jammers would be attuned to a single frequency, one capable of momentarily disrupting the alien signal running through the nanomachines. The signal itself took some time to identify and isolate, but once it was done, it was a simple matter of programming the signal jammers to block it.

  After they’d been activated, Fabius and his fellow Apothecaries retreated to Butcher-Bird’s passenger bay to observe the next phase of the experiment.

  ‘I do not see how all of this will help us find what we’ve come for, Manflayer,’ Palos said, as Fabius bent over the controls of the hololithic projector in the bay. ‘We are supposed to be searching for a ship. Not playing with sensors.’

  ‘Has it ever occurred to you to ask why our prize is here, Palos? Why here – so far from Terra? How did it come to be here? Who brought it?’ Fabius cocked his head. ‘Or perhaps you’re of a religious frame of mind – did the gods deposit it here, a grail waiting to be claimed by the worthy?’

  ‘What else could it be?’

  ‘An infinite number of things. The universe is vast and unknow­able. And I suspect that this place is one of those unknowable things.’

  ‘It seems fairly knowable to me.’

  ‘Says the warrior without eyes. You look, but do not see…’ Fabius hesitated. He shook his head. ‘The sun is artificial. It is a vast assemblage of mirrors, angled with inhuman precision, in order to capture residual solar energies from elsewhere and transmit them to the planet. The question is, where is it capturing them from?’

  Palos shrugged. ‘I do not care.’

  ‘You should. Because it appears to be drawing those residual energies from this planet. A continuous loop of energy, generated, refined and returned. The question is – why?’ Fabius tapped the controls, causing the hololithic image of the world to twist and reshape itself. ‘Because this is not a natural planetoid, but instead an artificial one. This crust of nanomachines is but the hull of something unseen.’

  ‘Hull? What sort of hull has an atmosphere?’ Palos snorted. ‘You are mad.’

  ‘The same way atmosphere might be caught within certain types of energy field. The air, corrosive as it is, is a by-product of the nano­machines. A form of artificial photosynthesis.’ Fabius shook his head. ‘Perhaps it’s some type of archaeotech – a xenos terraforming device. It would take more time than I suspect we possess to fully understand the process.’ He tapped the image, causing it to spin and flatten, until it displayed a three-dimensional representation of the area around the gunships. ‘Once the theory presented itself, it was a simple matter to alter our sensors to counter the interference. If I am right, we will see what lies beneath these false sands momentarily – ah. Listen.’

  A sound like sand caught in a windstorm slithered into the gunship. Fabius strode out of the bay and paused at the top of the ramp. The air had thickened, as if to herald a storm, and the sands were shifting. It was as if something were moving beneath them, or sinkholes were opening up. Hummocks surged upwards, only to collapse inwards with a thunderous hiss. The effect radiated outwards in a perfect circle around the gunships. The ground trembled beneath them, and Fabius fancied he could see vast, inhuman faces forming in the shifting sands, as they rose into the air or fell away.

  ‘Look – the sky,’ Savona shouted from the foot of the ramp. She gestured with her maul. Fabius laughed as he saw the flat, colourless sky darken and become scored with hundreds of slashes of flickering, sickly green. It put him in mind of impact striations on an over-taxed void shield. Ripples of vibrant colour, growing wider and brighter as the sky itself seemed to lose cohesion and slough away.

  The wind was roaring with hurricane force now, howling through the gulfs and valleys of collapsing sand. The sky was lashed by waves of green fire. Sand washed over the gunships, nearly blinding Fabius, despite his helmet. There was a sound like the groaning of primeval mechanisms, prodded into motion. The tremors running beneath them grew more savage, and the gunships creaked on their shocks. Mutants wailed in panic, and some fought to clamber back aboard the ships, only to be beaten back by their overseers.

  Palos caught at Fabius’ arm. His voice crackled over the vox frequency. ‘What have you done? We will be destroyed, if this continues.’

  Fabius laughed. ‘I think not. Look!’ He thrust Torment out, indicating the storm front of green lighting that swept towards them. Where the lightning struck, the sands crackled and surged upwards, higher and higher, over them. Or perhaps they were going down. He felt the shudder of rotation and heard the creak of metal. The patch of ground that the gunships had landed on was descending beneath the undulating nanomachine sands.

  The sand rushed around the three gunships like the torrent of a whirlpool, intermingling with the eerie lightning. The lightning spread, becoming veins of glowing green in curved, smooth walls as the sand slowly ceased its motion and became firm once mor
e, before it receded upwards. The ground – the platform – shuddered and came to a halt. Its rotation ceased, as antediluvian locking mechanisms slammed down on the rim of the circular platform. Fabius looked around in growing wonder.

  Jade lumens flickered to life across the vast space that they now found themselves in. In the emerald radiance, Fabius saw that their platform was one among hundreds, each set equidistant from the ­others, and at varying heights, mounted atop deceptively thin towers of some smooth, featureless metal. Instinctively, he activated his armour’s augurs, trying to create a sensor map of his surroundings.

  Each of the platforms was connected by a single walkway to the edge of an immense, circular tier. There were thousands of tiers, rising to impossible heights, and descending to imperceptible depths, all along the vertical curve of what could only be a colossal sphere.

  Each of the tiers was occupied by what appeared to be a labyrinth of prismatic galleries, winding back into the heart of the vast structure. And all were slowly, almost imperceptibly, moving. Rotating the way a world might turn in its place in the firmament. ‘Maybe an artificial gravity well, keeping the megastructure from flying apart,’ he murmured in awe, despite himself.

  Questions sped across the surface of his mind, one after the next. This place was nothing so much as a gargantuan orrery, built around a caged power source of incalculable potency. ‘I was right,’ he said, thumping the ramp of the gunship with the ferrule of his sceptre. The sound echoed loudly in the silence. ‘It’s a Dyson Sphere.’

  ‘I’ve never seen one this big,’ Palos said. ‘Or so well camouflaged.’ He started down the ramp. Fabius followed, more slowly.

  ‘I would guess that it has been here for some time. Longer than humanity has prowled the stars. In certain aeldari texts, it speaks of a great war in heaven. Most of it is allegorical nonsense, as could be expected of such a culture, but if you compare it to other xenos records there are… hints. Star-gods and cannibal suns. Warp-spawn and soulless legions that were more monstrous than any Abominable Intelligence. Machines that devoured entire worlds for fuel, and vampiric entities that drained the energy from stars. Cannons that could split reality with a single shot.’ Fabius smiled. ‘A war that laid waste to every galaxy in the universe. A war our existence has yet to recover from. Glorious to think of, isn’t it?’

  Palos grunted. ‘If it is the truth.’

  ‘What is truth but the perception of fact?’ Fabius descended past him. His mutants greeted him with quiet murmurs, their enthusiasm dampened by the vast silence. The causeway connected to their platform was wide enough for an army to march across, a hundred abreast. They hadn’t quite brought an army – but close.

  Under the direction of his overseers, mutants set up a pair of primi­tive heavy stubbers at the edge of the platform. A number of his creatures would remain behind to defend the gunships, under the command of Bellephus.

  Around the platform, mutants and Space Marines readied themselves to depart. Raucous singing rose from among the ranks of the 12th Millennial, while those loyal to Alkenex were more circumspect. Diomat stood apart from all of this, staring out at the tiers. The ­others gave the Dreadnought a wide berth, and Fabius could not blame them. Diomat was a thing apart, even now. Fabius joined him at the edge of the platform.

  ‘This world is a tomb,’ the Dreadnought said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it is here?’

  ‘According to Eidolon.’

  Diomat grunted. ‘You should never have reattached his head.’

  ‘Mistakes were made.’

  Diomat gave a grinding, mechanical laugh. ‘Yes. That is the story of us, is it not?’ He flexed his claws. ‘We make mistake after mistake, and call it perfection. This is but the latest. Perhaps it will be our last. Your last mistake. Your last failure, brother. How does it feel?’

  ‘I have not failed, I have merely been unsuccessful,’ Fabius said. ‘Eidolon boasts of a new beginning, and I will give him one. I will give us all one.’

  Another false laugh. Nearby mutants cringed at the harsh, rasping tones. ‘Hubris, brother. There is a saying, about pride and falls.’

  ‘Then you shall just have to catch me,’ Fabius said. Diomat looked down at him.

  ‘We will see.’

  The Dreadnought fell silent. Fabius did as well. Maybe Diomat was right. Maybe he was simply an old man, yearning for a past that had never existed. A chance to do things over. He looked down at himself. Healthy, now. Unbent, strong. Death did not crowd him, not yet. Perhaps that was it. With thoughts unclouded by imminent dissolution, his mind naturally turned down familiar paths.

  Was that to be the story of him, then? A cycle of nostalgia and panic, repeated ad nauseam until the day his creations could stand on their own. Then, this time might be different. With Fulgrim, and a renewed Legion to ward them, his New Men might prosper, even as old humanity had. He could teach them. Teach Fulgrim and the newborn legion. Teach them to avoid the mistakes of the past, and prevent them from collapsing in on themselves as his brothers had done.

  ‘How are we even going to find what we’re looking for? Search every tier?’ Savona said, as she joined him at the edge of the platform. Startled from his reverie, he glanced at her. Her armour bore fresh battle-pacts, he noted. She was not of the Legion, but she well knew the way to their heart. Debased as they were, they still valued such things in their leaders.

  ‘No. As a member of the apothecarion, I have the transponder codes for every gene-ship that served our Legion. Useless now, most of them. But some are still in use, though under different names and by different masters.’ He laughed. ‘A fact which has served me well, on occasion. Doubtless, this is one of the reasons Eidolon decided I was needed. Without the proper codes, it might take decades to locate the vessel in such a place. I can locate it in mere days.’

  ‘A gene-ship?’ Savona hissed. ‘Is that all we’re here for?’

  Fabius glanced at her. ‘Is that all? It is everything, woman. The key to our survival as something other than gene-enhanced monsters or maddened spawn. Even my skills have their limits, and this will ensure the Legion’s continued existence for generations to come.’

  ‘A fact the Lord Commander Primus is counting on,’ Palos rumbled, joining them. ‘They say it contains a tithe of gene-seed to rival the vaults of Terra.’ He glanced up at Diomat, and made as if to speak, but fell silent. The Dreadnought ignored him.

  ‘Not quite, but close. In the early days of the Great Crusade, our gene-stock was among the most reliable, as well as one of the largest. Progenoids developed quickly, and endured the rigours of transport more easily than others. Were it not for the blight, the loss of this vessel would have barely been noticed. As it was, it was a disaster.’ A sensor pinged, and he tapped at his vambrace, calling up a hazy holo­lithic map. A flashing mote bobbed along the hazy edge. ‘There. It’s still transmitting, as I’d hoped. Or something is, at least. Background radiation is making it difficult to compose an accurate sensor-map, but we have a general direction.’

  He turned. ‘Saqqara. It is time.’

  The Word Bearer pushed his way through the crowd of mutants, his daemon-flasks clattering. ‘You have a signal?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Very well.’ Saqqara unhooked a flask and murmured softly, running a finger over it in what might have been a calming manner. As he drew close to Fabius, the daemons within his flasks grew agitated.

  ‘They hate you, Fabius,’ Palos observed. ‘The daemons – I’ve never heard them make that sort of noise. Usually it’s all laughter and whispers.’

  ‘Why should they be any different to the rest of us?’ Savona said.

  ‘The Neverborn are stories made flesh,’ Saqqara said, holding up the flask. The formless thing within slammed minuscule fists against the walls of its prison. ‘Stories of murder and fear, despair and hope. Of exces
s and cruelty. They are warnings and retributions, hammered into shape by our belief. They are what we make of them.’ He looked at Fabius. ‘And he makes of them… nothing. He denies them, denies the story of them. It infuriates them, down to the very root of their conception.’

  Fabius smiled. ‘As I will always deny them. I will not play the willing meat for such lazy parasites. If they want my belief, they must show me something more than they have already.’ The thing in the flask grew agitated, causing it to shudder in Saqqara’s grip. Fabius leaned close, smile widening. ‘But that would require some degree of true sentience, I fear. Something these thought-forms are singularly ­incapable of. They are nothing but cunning mirrors – hollow and empty. But they do make wonderful scouts.’

  Saqqara turned, and popped open the flask. The thing inside spewed forth, like a gout of smoke. The Word Bearer gestured and the daemon-smoke coiled about his hand for a moment, before shooting off into the maze of tiers. He repeated the process several times, whispering to each. ‘Vast as this place is, it will take them some time,’ he said.

  Fabius thumped the platform with Torment.

  ‘Then we had best get started. Come… the future awaits.’

  Aboard the Vesalius, Igori felt a moment of dim panic. Fear was not an unknown, among the Gland-hounds. It had its uses, so long as it was not allowed to overwhelm you. Her fingers brushed across the hilt of her knife, as the tang of blood – augmented blood, New Man blood – reached her nose.

  She pressed herself flat to the wall and extended her knife, using the flat of the blade to capture the reflection of the corridor around the corner. The hatch to the apothecarium was open, but no alarms were sounding. Someone had disabled them. The lumens of the corridor flickered weakly. Power was being diverted from this section. The members of her pack who should have been on guard were nowhere in sight.